Red Hat to open RHN Satellite Server

In response to Oracle's recent release of new enterprise Linux management …

Red Hat's director of product management has revealed plans to release the source code of the Red Hat Network Satellite Server, the underlying infrastructure of the company's Red Hat Network (RHN) management technologies. RHN, an enterprise systems management platform that enables administrators to manage and maintain entire networks of Red Hat Linux computers, is at the heart of Red Hat's service-oriented business model. RHN facilitates update automation, system monitoring, broad permission control, configuration management, automated installation, package management and many other features that are critical for managing a large-scale Linux deployment.

The availability of the source code for Red Hat's Network Satellite Server could allow third-party Red Hat derivatives and possibly other distributions to build their own systems management platforms that can integrate with RHN and Red Hat's support services. It could also provide a foundation for other distributors that want to provide their own support services networks to compete with RHN.

The timing of this move makes it seem like a response to Oracle's recent release of the Oracle Management Pack for Linux, which is based on Oracle's Enterprise Manager 10g. Oracle's Linux Management Pack provides functionality similar to that of RHN and is intended to augment Oracle's Unbreakable Linux support services. Since October, Oracle has been competing directly with Red Hat, offering support to Red Hat customers for a fraction of the price of Red Hat's own support offerings.

It is too early to say how the availability of Satellite Server source code will influence competition between Red Hat and Oracle, but it seems likely that at least some commercial Linux distributors will evaluate the possibility of integrating the software into their own support frameworks.